What is the world coming to???

I read this too! It is unbelievable! I really don't think i even KNEW what sex was in 5th grade!! And to have no moral conscience or modesty as to do it in a room full of other kids is unreal!
CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY

This is crazy but why are they being charged with a crime? Wouldn't you think punishment would come from the school and their parents? Being charged with a crime and going to juvie could end up just hurting the kids more in the long run.

Sad! Very, very sad! What can I say?

I agree with James - this should be dealt with by parents and the school. What's next imprisoning three year olds for playing doctor?

I had a student teacher in high school severeal years ago and she was telling me when she student taught the kindergarteners they would pull the table together throw a blanket over it and start kissing each other and not just on the lips.

5 year olds shouldn't know a darn thing about kissing and making out.

This story is quite sad.

Very sad. Thank you for sharing.

Reading it over again isn't 12 and 13 a little old for 5th Grade??? Teenagers should not be in with 10 and 11 year olds...do you agree ?

I agree with James. Just imagine what they are going to learn in Juvie.

It is so sad to see that kids are doing that at that age. Why are our children starting so young? I almost said that they were growing up so fast, but they are no where near ready to grow up.

Karen, absolutely 12 and 13 is too old for fifth grade. I agree with James this should be handled by the parents and school. Where is the Crime?? Horrible, Yes, mind blowing , absolutely, indecent and immoral of course but a crime, NO!

I think this country is becoming communist. But I also realize that parents are not raising their children properly.

I hadn't heard about this one; this is awful. I think School and Parents both bear part of this fiasco. A crime, no but some discipline should definitely be enforced after this. When did kids stop being kids? Childhood seems to be a thing of the past and that is sad.

It is the parents fault if you ask me, why aren't they teaching their children the proper boundaries in public behaviour. Why aren't they teaching their children that sex is a loving thing to do in the confines of a mature adult relationship? What is wrong with teaching these basic things?? It says in the article that the parents are relinquishing control of their children to the school system but apparently to me they dropped the ball way before that. How is it the school's fault other than where was supervision while the teacher was in assembly??? Children only do wrong when they are not taught RIGHT! I am appalled.

Obviously the punishment cannot come from these parents. If they were in any way involved with their children, this would not have occured in the first place. Maybe this will be a wake up call to those and other parents throughout the country. This is not accpetable behavior for 10 & 11 years olds nevermind the 12 & 13 year olds. It is very sad that in this day and age that children are no longer allowed to be children. They are forced to grow up way too quickly under all the pressure to be smarter than other kids their age and to learn everything at such a fast pace. No wonder they feel they are grown up. It breaks my heart.

Too many parents are lame. Not invested in their children. I like what Jaquelyn Kennedy Onassis said: If you fail in raising your children, then you are a failure at life. That said, I have know some very invested parents whose kids grew up to be less than desirable, let's say. How hthngs got this out of control in a classroom is beyond me.

Someone needs to take a close look at the parents!

Why were they left unsupervised at that age? Charges should be brought up against the supervisor, prinicap and school board members, too, if the administration is responsible for children while they're in school. Someone had to authorize the teacher to leave the children without supervision. If the kids are charged, it's someone else's fault as well.

Crime? No. I see only one person questioning why these kids were in the classroom when the teacher was in an assembly. What was that about? I see a lot of condemnation of the parents, but allow me to give you something to think about, if you will (think about it, that is):

There are 4 children involved. I don't know that any molestation or anything has happened since kids can see sex and sexual acts on TV these days. I watched a kids channel last Sunday on which a rock band called "The Naked Brothers" (no they don't perform naked) are the stars. They are about 10-11 years old from the looks of them. And the topic of the next episode was one of them had their first kiss. On the preview, they had this 11-or-so-year-old saying, "Maybe I should just give up girls and move away somewhere" and they had a young girl saying, "Yes, I want to marry him! I do! I do!" I figure if this show stars 10-11 year olds, it's probably for the 6-10 year-old age group. Almost any movie out there these days shows married people tumbling under blankets, having sex.

Okay, now back to the kids having sex at school. (Please bear with me a little longer). Say one of these kids is more sexually aware than the others, and goes to school and sex, "Hey, let's play a game." And, gets the others involved. I can almost guarantee you that at this point, without any adult supervision, it's not going to matter what those parents taught their kids. I for one am here to tell you that not all kids live by the rules laid down for them by their parents. And, I was a goody two-shoes. I knew kids having sex in the 7th grade. In my senior class, before graduation, there were 3 girls who were pregnant.

I agree that parents need to teach their kids and I agree that they need to set high standards and a good example. But, I also know that kids will do this kind of stuff without permission no matter what their parents have taught them. Kids MUST HAVE adult supervision. Especially after the hormones kick in. The article says "When the kids are at school, they relinquish all responsibility to the administration." The administration should have made darned sure those kids were supervised. But, I can also guarantee you that some kids are going to fall through the cracks. It's easy to point fingers and crucify parents, but those people who are doing so need to think back about the things they were told not to do and did anyway.

Jessie, you make many very good points that I had not thought about. When I was a child growing up, I didn't do anything my mother told me not to do. I was too afraid of the punishment, which was often physical. I never snuck out. I never cut class. I wasn't allowed to date and never did while in high school. I just tried my best to act normal so no one would know how not normal I really was. I gained weight so boys would find me unattractive and I didn't have to deal with the embarassment of saying I wasn't allowed to go anywhere. So, some children actually do listen to their parents, whether out of fear or respect. My 7 year old has already come home saying one of the girls in her class was talking about her older sister having sex on the couch with her boyfriend. My daughter knows what is appropriate to talk about at school/in public and what is not. If she is not sure she asks me. I have told her that she can ask me absolutely anything and she does. Sometimes my answers are that she is a little too young to know and when she gets older we can talk about it. I believe communication with your child goes a long way. And these children are abviously not getting the message from their parents. The parents are definitely at fault her along with the school faculty. It's a shame but parents need to accept some sort of responsibilty for their children's actions, especially at this age.

I think you are right, Jennifer, in that the parents do need to accept some responsibility. But, I also just want to say that, at 7, my daughters both knew the rules, agreed with them, and would talk to me about them. At 13, they became different people. The hormones kicked in and the sense was turned off.

Still, my point is that kids sometimes experiment, without the parents permission. And, by reading this article, I don't see that any of these kids have a history of these actions. So, we I don't think we can tell by reading it whose fault or whatever it is. Let me give you a scenario, though, that I know that happens in the world and would definitely need to be taken care of by the parents, but doesn't necessarily put the blame on them.

Let's say there is a 13-year-old boy, named Justin. His parents have a lot of open communication with Justin, have said all of the right things, and Justin knows what is expected of him. He knows, for instance, that after school, he MUST come right home. But, there is another kid, Frankie, who even though he knows he is supposed to come straight home, also knows that no one will be home because his mom is a single mom and has to work. Frankie and Justin are neighbors and walk home together. As they walk home, Fred, the 35-year-old pedophile on the block pops out for a quick hello and tells one of the boys he has something in the garage to give to Frankie's mom. Both boys have been told not to go into people's houses without permission, but this is a garage and the door is open and it will just take a minute. So, they go in. When they get inside the door a ways, on the wall, past some cupboards, so they can't be seen from the front is some pictures of people having sex. Fred says, "You boys ever done that?" Of course both boys say no. So Fred goes on to tell them how great it is and they should try it and all grownups do it, getting his jollies cause he's picturing down the road when he eventually talks the boys into trying a few things. He tells the boys they are just little kids and can't participate, but if they ever grow up, come on back and hands Frankie something to give to his mom. The boys get out of there and discuss what they've seen and go on home. The whole time in the garage was less than 5 minutes, but these boys now have been exposed to something neither their mom nor their teachers know about. And, are they going to tell? Probably not. Why? Because they don't want the punishment. It could be that one of the boys has parents that severely punish them so the other one can't talk about it because then the other one would really be in trouble. Or, they just forget the incident for the moment cause they talk about other stuff. Neither boy is more than 5 minutes late so nobody notices. But, the boys have been exposed to stuff the parents don't know about and which, usually, especially when goaded by hormones, will work on their minds. In what they feel is a safe environment to experiment, i.e., with other kids their age, they may try stuff they saw in the picture.

You may think that those things don't happen, but I've heard so many stories about kids being molested by trusted uncles, older siblings, pastors, neighbors, etc. People whom the parents know (or think they know) really well. Some have known them all their lives. They just didn't know the secrets about these people. And, the kids didn't tell their parents, even though they could usually talk to them because of the shame or because the molester has threatened to kill their parents. You'd think that the kids would know that couldn't happen, but they don't always realize that. And, a lot of parents teach kids to respect adults and to not talk back to them. Don't say no. Or, the molester will tell them: Don't tell me you didn't know what was going to happen, you knew and you wanted it to. You liked it."

Ask a therapist some time. You'll find that these things happen all the time. So, now, take that scenario and say we find Justin two months from that day, trying to have sex with the little girl down the block. Everyone jumps on the parents, saying it's their fault.

My point in all this is we don't have a clue what is going on. Obviously something is. But, is it an oversexualized society we live sexualizing our young kids? Or is it a molester has gotten to one of these kids? Or is it the parents themselves are bad role models. We don't know which it is. What surprised me about the comments on this article is that everyone was so anxious to condemn the parents. A week or so ago, a little boy died after being lured into the house by three sexual predators. I didn't see anyone jumping on the parents for being bad parents. (Thank goodness for that). But, it's interesting to me how the point of view changes according to how much information we have and when we don't really have any information, everyone is so quick to call "Off with their heads!" Humans are an interesting bunch!

Jessie, I do feel sorry for all the 'Justin's' in this world. I do know that this stuff happens all the time and it shouldn't. All we can do is try to inform and protect our children. Because of things like this, there is no way I will ever let my 13 year old walk home by themselves from school. Especially if there is no one waiting at home for them. I know things can go wrong very quickly and I do not want to risk my children that way. I also know that you can't be with your child 100% of the time but I plan on doing my best to protect them.

As for this article, I believe that the parents are partly to blame and so is the school faculty. Nobody is blameless in this situation. I do feel bad for all those children involved because this is not something that should be happening at this age. They are just children after all and to place the blame solely on them is wrong too. And yes, knowing more information would definitely help in figuring this all out.

There is actually another article on this I came across today where most everybody seems to think the parents are completely blameless in this.

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976951513

Things have changed so much even from my generation and I'm only 21. These kids have apparently been exposed to something at home, or the parents havent done a good job sheltering these children to a certain degree. So sad!

oh and I love that quote by mrs kennedy how very true

A sad but true happening in most if not all schools. And if you only knew what the kindergardners were doing. How about 1st grade. Yes it is happening in the early grades too.